Washington Continues to Violate 1972 Treaty on Bio-Warfare

The U.S. government has refused to provide the veterans who were subjected to chem-bio experimentation with still classified documents that would expose America’s continuing use of dangerous and often lethal substances for warfare.

Coupled with the refusal by the U.S. military to provide affected veterans with the requested files on America’s chem-bio warfare program is the Pentagon's recent disclosure that live anthrax samples were sent from the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to all 50 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, and nine nations - Canada, Japan, Britain, South Korea, Australia, Italy, Norway, Germany, and Switzerland.

It is known that Dugway was the originating source of the deadly aerosolized anthrax that was dispersed using the U.S. postal system in the weeks following the 9/11 attack in 2001. The Dugway Proving Ground in Utah is the location of the government's only aerosolized anthrax production facility in the country. It was from this facility that aerosolized anthrax spores were sent to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland for use in the postal system attacks in 2001.

Fort Detrick was the facility where the "Ames strain" variety of the pathogen was originally produced. It was then sent to Dugway where it was aerosolized for maximum dispersal and widespread casualties, including a number of civilian deaths carried out by the Pentagon's top secret "PROJECT JEFFERSON." One of the goals of PROJECT JEFFERSON was the use of the sorting machines and pressurized rollers employed by the U.S. postal system to contaminate envelopes that would spread the spores around the United States.

In violation of the 1972 BWC, the United States continues to conduct dubious research into the use of anthrax and other deadly pathogens for warfare. The federal government continues to fund the expansion of bio-safety levels 3 and 4 (BSL-3 and BSL-4) laboratories across the country: Boston University, the University of Texas in Galveston, Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio, Lawrence Livermore Labs in California, and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Los Alamos is also a major nuclear weapons research center. All the biological warfare research is funded under the rubric of “bio defenses” and guise of “homeland security.”

Contractor scientist William Capers Patrick III of Battelle Memorial Institute was part of the original Fort Detrick anthrax development program, which “officially” ended in 1972 when President Nixon signed, along with the Soviet Union and United Kingdom, the BWC. Nixon had actually ordered the Pentagon to stop producing biological weapons in 1969. It now seems likely that the U.S. military and intelligence community failed to follow Nixon's original orders and, in fact, continued to violate a lawful treaty signed by the United States. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) received authorization from President Bill Clinton in 1997 to research the production of biological warfare agents, including anthrax, in small bomblets. The program was code named Project CLEAR VISION. In addition, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the U.S. Defense Department embarked on Project BACCHUS that researched the production of anthrax weapons using commercially-available materials. BACCHUS achieved the creation of a deadly anthrax weapon using just one kilogram of powdered anthrax spores.

In January 2002, “The Hartford Courant” reported that 27 sets of biological toxin specimens were reported missing from Fort Detrick after an inventory was conducted in 1992. The paper reported that among the specimens missing was the Ames strain on anthrax. A former Detrick laboratory technician named Eric Oldenberg told “The Courant” that while at Detrick, he only handled the Ames strain, the same strain sent to the Senate and the media. “The Hartford Courant” also revealed that other specimens missing from Fort Detrick included Ebola, hanta virus, simian AIDS, and two labeled “unknown,” a cover term for classified research on secret biological agents.

In 2008, Dr. Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist at Fort Detrick, Maryland, reportedly committed suicide after ingesting prescription-strength Tylenol and codeine. The scientist is said to have killed himself just as the FBI was prepared to charge him in the 2001 anthrax attacks. Ivins was actually part of the FBI team that investigated the anthrax sent in letters to the U.S. Senate’s Democratic leadership. Many investigators of the 2001 anthrax attacks, including a number of journalists, now believe that it was the FBI that murdered Ivins in order to cover up their own involvement in the anthrax attacks.

A Soviet era defector, the former First Deputy Director of Biopreparat from 1988 to 1992 and the USSR’s leading anthrax expert, Ken Alibek (formerly Kanatjan Alibekov), who later became a U.S. government consultant, made the astounding claim that the person who was behind the anthrax attacks may have been advising the U.S. government. After having passed a lie detector test, Alibek was cleared of any suspicion. However, Alibek’s supposed innocence did not mean that Ivins was guilty of conducting the attacks.

Interestingly, Alibek was President of Hadron Advanced Biosystems. On October 2, 2001, just two days before the first anthrax case was reported at a newspaper office in Boca Raton, Florida, Advanced Biosystems received an $800,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to focus on very specific defenses against anthrax. Hadron has long been linked to the CIA.

U.S. military and intelligence agencies refused to provide the FBI with a full listing of the secret facilities and employees working on anthrax projects. Because of this stonewalling, crucial evidence was been withheld. The first major media outlet to accuse the FBI of foot dragging on the anthrax probe was the BBC. On March 14, the BBC's “Newsnight” program highlighted an interview with Dr. Barbara Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists. After claiming the CIA was involved, through government contractors, in secret testing of sending anthrax through the mail, Rosenberg, someone with close ties to the biological warfare community, was publicly discredited by the White House, FBI, and, not surprisingly, the CIA.

The BBC reported that Battelle Memorial Institute, for whom Alibek served as biological warfare program manager in 1998, conducted a secret biological warfare test in the Nevada desert using genetically-modified anthrax in early September 2001, just before the 9/11 attack. The BBC reported that Patrick's paper on sending anthrax through the mail was also part of Battelle’s classified work on the deadly bacterial agent.

On this 14th anniversary of the 9/11 and anthrax attacks, incidents which drastically changed America, the U.S. government continues to lie about its involvement in anthrax production and classified chem-bio warfare research. America has used the specter of Iraq and Syria possessing chem-bio “weapons of mass destruction” to facilitate “regime change” in those two nations, now wracked by bloody civil wars. Perhaps it is the United States, which has never met a weapon of mass destruction it did not like and wanted to mass produce, to undergo regime change so the world can be a safer place.